I am a collection of dismantled almosts.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the idea that our identities are often shaped by our unfulfilled potentials and dreams.
Anne Sexton's quote suggests that individuals often find their identity in what they have nearly achieved but have not fully realized. It evokes the notion that our lives are composed of various aspirations and ambitions that we have pursued, but have not yet completed. This collection of 'almosts' reveals the complexity of our existence, illustrating that our worth and experiences are not solely defined by successes, but also by the dreams and goals we continue to strive for, even if they remain just out of reach.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech about embracing failure and striving for personal growth.
The Witch's Life" When I was a child there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story window from behind the wrinkled curtains and sometimes she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.
Do you like me?” No answer. Silence bounced, fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, I did not beg, but blackness filled my ears, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven.
Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.
Abundance is scooped from abundance yet abundance remains.
I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float.
I am your dwarf. I am the enemy within. I am the boss of your dreams. See. Your hand shakes. It is not palsy or booze. It is your Doppelganger trying to get out. Beware...Beware...
Can you gather your vital breath and yet be tender like a newborn baby?
Prescribing hard work for the soft, or easy work for the hardy, is generally nonsense. What is always needed in any aim is right effort, right time, right people, right materials.
The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.
When men ask me how I know so much about men, they get a simple answer: everything I know about men, I learned from me.
Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective.
Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.
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